Speakers Series : Kelly Taxter, CCS ’03 – Second Chances

February 27, 2012 from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
CCS Bard, Seminar Room 1

“Second Chances” focuses on Matters of Fact, for which I was invited to re-evaluate and re-hang Too Much Joy, Re-visiting Works from the Pattern and Decoration Movement, an exhibition I initially presented in 2002 while a first year student at CCS Bard.

Cycling back to an academic approach to exhibition-making directly after closing Taxter & Spengemann, the commercial gallery I co-owned and directed with another CCS Bard graduate for 9 years, brought forth a series of parallel inquiries that influenced my thinking about the Pattern and Decoration movement and guided my choices for the current exhibition. 40 years after the P+D era, what institution wields the greatest influence over the representation of the past and the direction of the future: the market, the museum, or the artist? Is it even appropriate to assume boundaries separate each, or has the nature of art become systematized in a manner akin to the fashion industry, wherein all are equally regarded as professionals and subject to the capricious habits and cycles of a trade? Proposing this to be true, how can understanding an artistic movement, seemingly unnecessary, impossible, or otherwise unthinkable today, help to disrupt the smooth functionality of the art system?

Kelly Taxter graduated from the Center for Curatorial Studies in 2003. From 2003 to 2011 she owned and directed Taxter & Spengemann, together with fellow CCS Bard alum Pascal Spengemann.

About The Speakers Series: Each semester the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College hosts a regular program of lectures by the foremost artists, curators, art historians, and critics of our day, situating the school and museum’s concerns within the larger context of contemporary art production and discourse. Lectures are open to students and faculty, as well as to the general public, and will also be documented through video and/or audio recordings, which will reside in the CCS Bard Library and Archives.